"The still current term #Caucasian connects directly to collective degradation, in the form of the gendered, eastern slave trade, via the network of learned societies that so deeply influenced the #historyOfScience in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries."
Women in the History of Science brings together primary sources that highlight women’s involvement in scientific knowledge production around the world. Drawing on texts, images and objects, each primary source is accompanied by an explanatory text, questions to prompt discussion, and a bibliography to aid further research....
⚛ We've had relativity, the physics of time, genius, the speed of light, the Grand Unified Theory, photons, black holes, quantum physics - but this is the first time Melvyn Bragg and his experts have considered Albert Einstein himself.
The cervical screening test, or 'pap smear' was developed thanks to a lab technician called Mary Papanicolaou, who had a vaginal swab taken every day for 20 years to advance research in this area.
Mary worked as a lab technician at Cornell University for many years but was never paid because she was a woman #HistoryOfScience#WomensHistory
Not the importance of 'top down' idealizations in Gauss's proof — these are essential even for the most empirical and 'bottom-up' of concerns: error in data collection.
i was researching how breadfruit trees were moved around the world by colonials and came across this quote on the wikipedia entry for william bligh: "In order to win a premium offered by the Royal Society, he first sailed to Tahiti to obtain breadfruit trees"
it's not the first time i've seen references to royal society competitions/prizes/quests and i'd like to learn more about this subject.
but the histories of the royal society that i've come across so far have been in that sort of "heroic colonial"/"great man" mode.
i'm looking for something that's more along the lines of "what role did the royal society have to play in the movement of plants and other organisms?" it seems like they were putting out these "challenges" for "explorers", but that's where my knowledge ends.
i'd also be happy to read a book that's about the role of the royal society in empire-building & colonialism in general.
Grinding up vulture brain, mixing it with oil and inserting it into the nose to cure head pain sounds ridiculous to us.
But that sort of medieval medicine actually represents a huge advance: acceptance of the logic that humans could use our brains to try things to cure disease -- and to the monks who wrote the recipe, acceptance of a responsibility to God to take care of human bodies.
Irish astronomer, astrophysicist & historian of science Mary Brück was born #OTD in 1925.
Although her astronomical research, she is probably best remembered as a writer, with a particular interest in the history of science. Her published works include ‘The Peripatetic Astronomer: The Life of Charles Piazzi Smyth’; ‘Agnes Mary Clerke and the Rise of Astrophysics’; ‘Women in Early British and Irish Astronomy: Stars and Satellites’; and ‘Ladybird Book of the Night Sky’.
#FinishedReading this #HistoryOfScience on the non- Western contribution to science from 1450 on; stories range from brutal exploitation of indigenous biological knowledge to scientists like SN Bose who worked in more collaborative and acknowledged ways. Prose is a little pedestrian and academic but the material is really interesting. Not impressed with the erasure of Rutherford's New Zealand nationality though! #Bookstodon@bookstodon
#STEM#HistoryOfScience#LaborHistory: "This introduction to the Focus section “Let’s Get to Work: Bringing Labor History and the History of Science Together” considers the need for and implications of a labor history of science. What would the broad contours of such an approach be? And what new insights, into both the past and the present, could be revealed? The contributions to this Focus section show how a labor history of science broadens our understanding of the practice and practitioners of science. They also use these historical narratives recursively, to reflect on the practice of doing history of science. And they suggest that we come up short in our obligations to the labor of our field’s past and present. This introduction offers a brief overview of the points of intersection between the fields of labor history and history of science and indicates where these intersections might be more profitably developed."
If you're interested in what the history of science has to say about AI, have a look at this series of eight short films made by Paul Sen (a brilliant director I made TV with years ago), interviewing Simon Schaffer (prof of the history of science at Cambridge). Trailer here, and the first weekly film is just out:
Happy 90th birthday to the amazing Dr. Jane Goodall, born #OTD (3 Apr 1934). Here’s a display about her childhood nature club with a cool drawing, from the 2020 Becoming Jane exhbition at the National Geographic Museum:
Women in the History of Science | Free book download (www.uclpress.co.uk)
Women in the History of Science brings together primary sources that highlight women’s involvement in scientific knowledge production around the world. Drawing on texts, images and objects, each primary source is accompanied by an explanatory text, questions to prompt discussion, and a bibliography to aid further research....